KHARTOUM, 23 September 2008 (IRIN): Fresh accusations of large-scale summary executions and arbitrary arrest have been levelled against Sudan’s government over its reaction to an attack by Darfur rebels on Khartoum in May – charges the government has rejected.
– It is estimated that at least 500 individuals from Darfur, both civilians and presumed JEM [Justice and Equality Movement] combatants, were summarily executed or extra-judicially killed in the three days that followed JEM’s attack against Omdurman on 10 May 2008, the Darfur Relief and Documentation Centre (DRDC), an NGO based in Geneva, said in a report released mid-September.
The report also said that more than 4.000 people – mostly civilians with no ties to the rebel movement – were arbitrarily arrested after the attack on Omdurman, a city lying across the Nile from Khartoum.
According to DRDC, other aspects of the government riposte to the JEM assault included “enforced disappearance, inhumane and degrading treatment, ethnic profiling and racial insults and violence, discrimination, incommunicado detention, trial irregularities and judicial oppression, assault on freedom of movement as well as curtailment of freedom of the press and information”.
The DRDC report also accused the government of purposefully destroying or stealing property of the families of those it arrested. “This policy amounts to an economic war rendering life unbearable to the victims and their families especially when it is coupled with the arrest of the family’s breadwinner.”
The government denies the allegations and disputes the numbers.
State Minister of Information, Rabie Abdul Atti, told IRIN the arrests were necessary to diffuse the atmosphere of insecurity and terror created by the rebels.
– The arrests were not against Darfuris, he said. – The security authorities don’t arrest anybody due to colour or tribe. If there is any arrest, it will be on the grounds of evidence.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also denounced the government reaction to the JEM assault which they too alleged included arbitrary arrests and summary executions.
And in her report to the United Nations Human Rights Council in September, Sima Samar, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Sudan, said the government’s response after the 10 May attack “entailed serious violations of civil and political rights”.
“At the end of July, two and a half months after the attacks, some 500 were feared to still be in NISS [National Intelligence and Security Services] detention, their whereabouts unknown, and the authorities had provided no specific information on those in detention to relatives or human rights workers,” Samar’s report added.
The government has dismissed Samar’s claims, calling her an agent of the European Union who wants to distort Khartoum’s image.
